Explain the importance of Nick Carraway as a narrator in, "The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Extracts from this document...

Introduction

Explain the importance of Nick Carraway as a narrator in, "The Great Gatsby" by F. Scott Fitzgerald. F. Scott Fitzgerald said, "For the majority of creative people, life is a pretty mean trick." Jay Gatsby is, without a doubt, a creative character. His life was a, "mean trick." He spent his life longing for the unreachable and was killed as a result. Nick Carraway's first-person viewpoint, allows the reader, to participate in his sense of discovery as the narrative takes on meaning at various levels of abstraction in such a way that the reader and Nick are linked in thought from the beginning of the book. On the most superficial level, Nick becomes a logical choice as narrator. His physical proximity to the main characters and his trustworthiness situate him ideally to serve as a confidant on several fronts, a character who knows details of the story from many points of view and observe much of the action firsthand. Nick keeps detached from the rest of the characters in "The Great Gatsby" because he has dissimilar views. He is used by Fitzgerald to subtly voice his own opinions. ...read more.

Middle

Nick's importance comes through with the emphasis given to the valley of ashes. He uses it as a constant reminder of the reality that the other characters are ignorant of. Nick is a bookish character and represents the intellectual side of the 1920s. "Family Romance" was coined by Sigmund Freud in 1925 (the same year that "The Great Gatsby" was published) to describe the fantasy of being freed from one's parents and joining a higher social standing. A popular idea in America as an isolationist country with its inhabitants influenced by the American Dream; this also explains why Gatsby changed his name. Later in the book Nick undergoes a spiritual epiphany, "[he] suddenly was delivered from the womb of his purposeless splendour." The use of "womb" and earlier with "conception" interweaves a religious connotation with the idea of Gatsby's escape from his past, which is in fitting with Freud's Family Romance. Again, the use of the epiphany was a key feature of a new strand of writing fashionable in the 1920's used predominantly by James Joyce in "Dubliners" published in 1914. ...read more.

Conclusion

The confused image of God in the book, most obviously when Wilson says, "you can't fool God'.......he was looking at the eyes of Doctor T.J Eckleburg", is indicative of the lack of moral direction widespread in the 1920s. Tom tells Myrtle that Daisy is a Catholic and can not divorce her. Nick is "shocked" by the lie. As Arthur Mizener remarks, it is Nick who at last achieves a "gradual penetration of the charm and grace of Tom and Daisy's world. What he penetrates to is corruption, grossness, and cowardice." Nick is eager to insert a spiritual edge to Gatsby that will separate him from the agnostic society by referring to his, "Platonic conception of himself ". Nick is the only individual sympathetic to Gatsby. Fitzgerald uses the character of Nick Carraway as a portrayal of a society, other than the socially privileged exemplified by his pathos towards Gatsby. Nick shows ambivalence in his dedication to satirising American society. He detests them and yet thrives off them. Nick is used as the modernist viewpoint with his first person narration and condemnation of contemporary society. He allows the story to have an intellectual depth as well as showing that F. Scott Fitzgerald was a writer of his time. ...read more.

Related GCSE F. Scott Fitzgerald essays

If Daisy says she's never loved Tom, is there someone whom she thinks she loves? Daisy said she's never loved tom but she loved tom for his money and status but never actually loved him. She loves his lost love now.

Scott Fitzgerald's because the fictional world Fitzgerald has created closely resembles the world he himself experienced. But not every narrator is the voice of the author. In order for this story to be convincing, we must trust the narrator. We take on his perspective, if not totally, then substantially.

She is Tom Buchanan's wife and she too comes from a wealthy family of the Mid-Western part of the States as Nick is. She is connected to Nick because they are cousins. * At first, Daisy looks like a joyful person with a lovely husband and a child, but as

Gatsby's vision of ideal love is more deeply hidden beneath the glamour, and we soon find out that it is the ordinary reality of love that shatters his dream. Tom and Daisy Buchanan are a rich couple that we quickly become familiar with.

But the "jazz age" ended with the great economic depression in America due to The Wall Street Crash. Similarly Fitzgerald increasingly drank and his life became dissipated. His early promise and creativity seemed to be going to waste. He recognized his own failings and wasted promise and they, along with

This really does seem to fit in with the 'American image', a self-sufficient person, owning all that he can see ("the lawn started at the beach and ran down for a quarter of a mile"). At first appearances this is a testament to the power available for those willing to

This notion is repeated throughout The Great Gatsby. Up to this point in the novel, Fitzgerald has given only subtle hints to his broad theme about the American Dream, but with the revelation of Gatsby's decision to make Daisy the incarnation of his dream, Fitzgerald is suddenly able to reveal

However when Gatsby presents evidence of a medal that, according to Nick, âhad an authentic lookâ, the reader is obligated to believe that there is more to Gatsby than meets the eye. Nick uses the term âcharacterâ to describe Gatsby, highlighting his role as an almost fictional being.